A reporter tags along for nighttime observations of these elusive mammals
My companions scanned the treetops with binoculars and a thermal-imaging monocular. I stared at the branches and leaves, pretending I knew what to look for. It was a cool June evening just before sunset on a village road on Langkawi Island, Malaysia.“There’s one! Up there,” one of the biologists called out. I squinted at the spot, about five meters up the tree trunk, and saw only a brown knob speckled with gray. Where? Then the knob stirred. Its top edge rose and turned, and I was staring into a pair of bulging eyes set on a small head with a short snout.
My first colugo. The size of a house cat, colugos are nocturnal mammals that live in trees. Colugos are also called “flying lemurs,” which is a misnomer because they cannot fly and they are not lemurs. A colugo has a cape of skin that stretches from its neck to the tips of its four limbs and tail. That skin, furry on top, helps colugos glide far and hide well in the canopy.
“Wait … Oh, it has a baby!” called zoologist Priscillia Miard of Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang and leader of that evening’s search. She passed me her binoculars as the team discussed the identity of this colugo.
